


the mother we share

by willowoftheriver



Series: this town will eventually take me [2]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alpha Bruce Wayne, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Batman Identity Reveal, Canon Blending, Childbirth, Joker (DCU) Has Issues, M/M, Movie 1: Batman Begins (2005), Movie: The Dark Knight (2008), Omega Joker (DCU), POV Joker (DCU), Pregnancy, Twins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22398910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowoftheriver/pseuds/willowoftheriver
Summary: The Joker arrives at Wayne Manor late one December night.
Relationships: Joker (DCU)/Bruce Wayne
Series: this town will eventually take me [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1612429
Comments: 8
Kudos: 177





	the mother we share

By mid-December in Gotham, snow has usually been on the ground for awhile, enough that it’s built up into soggy gray layers, riddled through with grit and trash. The filth all filters ever downward, and Joker drags his feet through it slowly, methodically, a dance to some music he can only just hear at the edge of his ears. One foot sliding up behind the other, his arms out from his sides with stretched, grasping hands, and he can only smile even though, at the moment, he’s in a substantial amount of pain.

(The best pain he’s ever felt.)

This is the street where he first saw the Batman. The very place, even down to where he’s standing. It hadn’t been winter then, though—it had been hot with the smoky dregs of summer, claustrophobic between the rotting buildings that tower up on either side of the street, trapping the reek of sweat and garbage that wafts up from the gutter.

The steam that burst from the pipes had been warm and wet in Joker’s lungs, sticky across the surface of his eyes. Around him, all the little rats of the Narrows had been flushed from their holes, screaming and clawing themselves into a writhing, interlocked ball that only constricted tighter the more frantic they became.

And Joker should’ve _danced_ in the center of it, closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of panic and blood, stepping in time to the sound of breaking glass as the corrupt, festering balance that the Narrows had stagnated in for as long as he could remember tore itself apart into raw chaos.

But Joker had only stood there. The world frayed at the edges and phantasms snapped in the corner of his eyes, blood vessels clenching in his brain as doors he’d slammed shut years before strained to fly open and ooze the oily contents behind them.

But yet, he hadn’t been afraid. Because he could only stand there and _look_.

Above him, risen over the chaos. Gliding on sharp black wings as wide as the road, leaving napalm trails in their wake. Rough leather skin that twisted into a human mouth and red, scalding pits of eyes.

So very silent. Nearly close enough to touch.

And though he’d already heard the rumors on the street, it was only there, following it with his eyes, that he knew:

 _That_ was a Bat Man.

The slick had seeped out of him, warming the overexcited skin of his thighs. The alphas had come, then, even more mindlessly than usual, but that _image_ —that image had stayed in his head even as he killed them all, licked their blood off his hands.

He’d found a room overlooking this spot, just as soon as he’d slipped Arkham’s collar. (For all that they called him a _high risk, category nine patient_ , the omega ward was truly pathetic on security.)

He created a little nest of old newspapers and ratty blankets and spent every day of every month with his eyes looking through a cracked, scummy window. Sometimes focused on the street. Sometimes the sky.

Thinking.

A car comes barreling up at him out of the darkness at the end of the street, going faster than all the little beat cops would probably approve of, if they cared to enforce things like that in places like this. Besides, everyone knows that it’s _oh_ so dangerous to slow down in this neighborhood.

He stops for him, though, bumper an inch to his leg. Not quite willing to mow down a helpless omega, but the horn blows and he screams something awful through the windshield at him.

Joker just grins, thumping his hands down on the hood of the car and dragging them up, up through the fresh snow there until his fingers go numb.

Just what he’s been looking for—a cab.

The driver’s skeptical when he tells him where he’s going, of course. He gives him the once over he’s been getting his whole life, taking in the sunken eyes and the yellow teeth, but what’s really important, stretching up from his lips, is hidden in the shadows and his hair. It’s all grown out, the green faded by oil back into something close to the natural blonde at the roots.

“That’s . . . pretty far. You got the cash for that?”

He has a knife, and he could slice this guy's neck open and pull his tongue out through it with just as little effort as it would take to pay him, and so much more satisfaction. But he _really_ isn’t in the mood to drive right now.

So he flashes more than enough bills to cover a trip to the outskirts of town, whatever route the fucker decides to take, and throws himself back into the sticky faux-leather seat.

(There’s another pain then. Or rather, just a worsening of it, as it never really _stops._ It makes him giggle.)

The guy is looking at him in what he probably thinks is a very subtle way in the rearview.

Joker makes a show of it, though all he can manage is a pout. (Omegan tears have never really come to him as easy as they’re supposed to.)

“I can’t believe he—” He cuts himself off, shakes his head, lets that vague little sentence hang there. The inclusion of ‘ _he_ ’ was more enough to get the driver’s mind firing to fill in a thousand blanks.

Joker sits back and watches the scenery change, though it’s less obvious of a transition with that gentling layer of snow sitting atop everything. Still, the further they get from the Narrows, the more the stench of poverty and desperation slowly, _slowly_ fades.

Of course, it doesn’t _entirely_ dissipate until they’re at the city limits.

(On one of the graffitied walls of his little den-room, right across from the window where he could see it with just the slightest shift of his eyes, he nailed up a board. And on it, he wrote a number of facts. Eventually, he’d added newspaper clippings and photos and a bunch of other shit, some of it connected with tacks and string—because honestly, after so many heists and targeted killings, _research_ wasn’t an entirely new concept to him—but to start with, it had just been this:

  * The Batman’s a white male alpha, about his age. (That was far from guesswork on his part. The first two were self evident, but the secondary gender, the age—Joker had been under his fists, laid for hours split open on his knot. He’s an alpha in his prime. Incidentally, he also doesn’t smoke (no nicotine stains, no smell), doesn’t shoot up in his spare time (no track marks), and judging from the thick thatch of pubic hair, a few individual strands of which had stayed with him, dried to his thighs by cum, long after the Bat had gone, he has dark hair under that cowl, nearly black. Blue eyes.)
  * The Batman has money. (The equipment, obviously. That suit alone. He’s not some idealistic little punk from Joker's old neighborhood. And even his hands—oh, they have calluses in some places, from weapons, training, hitting. But they’re lily white and they’ve never washed a dish or seen a day of paid manual labor in their existence.)
  * The Batman once had a bad day. (No one dresses up like a bat to beat criminals into hospitalization if they didn’t.)



He’d stared at those three facts for months, let everything else develop from them. And maybe he’d even been sabotaging himself, just a little, because once he realized, it seemed like it should’ve been obvious all along.

Coleman Reese had been staring him in the face the entire time. And he was what tied it all together.)

The cab grinds to a halt at the front gate—of _course_ there’s a gate. Have to keep the unwashed masses at bay. But there’s also a speaker, and Joker extends a finger, rings the button for a touch too long.

The driver doesn’t even pretend not to stare. He’d laugh if he got turned away. (What a crazy bitch, he’d think—but he isn’t. He really, really isn’t.)

When the old butler answers, Joker hopes he hears the smile in his voice.

“Ah, Jeeves—ooh, this is awkward, isn’t it? You don’t, ah, know me personally, but I think Ba—” He lets that ‘a’ hang in his throat, die off into a nasally chuckle. “ _Brucie_ would want to see me.”

There’s a pause, long and—ha—pregnant.

And Jeeves never does reply, but the gate swings open, creaking against the ice built up on its hinges.

The driver doesn’t seem to believe it until Joker’s actually walking up onto the porch, stepping into the long, uneven shape of light that falls out when Jeeves opens one of the huge front doors.

He takes him in, and his expression is so funny he hates to even glance away for the second it takes him to throw his fare behind him. The driver gets out to grab for it before the wind can blow it away, hissing some fucking _rude_ things at him, but he doesn’t care.

He’s stepping into the one place truly the Bat’s. And to think, it was somewhere he’d been vaguely aware of his whole life.

Wayne Manor.

(Why would Coleman Reese know the identity of the Batman, if you believed he actually did?

Well, who were his associates? _Who did he work for?)_

The butler shuts the door behind them with a thud that literally echoes in the ridiculously cavernous foyer. (If he recalls correctly—and, honestly, that’s always hit or miss—probably about ten of the hellhole apartment he and his mother lived in when he was a kid could fit in it alone.)

“ _You_ —”

“Did you not think it was me?”

He hisses through more pain—it’s getting more intense each time. But it’s easy to keep his eyes wide open as it filters down pleasurably, tingly, through each limb, and take in each staid, dustless antique in the corners of the room, every dramatic line built into the brick and wood and stone.

Cyrus Pinkney Wayne designed this, didn’t he? They mentioned him in school (not that he remembers much of it. Did he get to sixth grade? Fifth?). The little omega who drew up plans and designs long before omegas were supposed to ever even think, and his alpha, the great Solomon Wayne, who made it reality out of love.

What a horror they built for each other.

(Maybe that’s played out again and again, all along their descendants.)

“Oh, I knew _exactly_ who you were.” Jeeves is holding himself so alertly, like he’s expecting an _attack_.

It’s almost funny, and he does giggle. “You confirmed what I’d, ah, guessed.”

“You weren’t guessing.”

Oh, he really isn’t one to back down, old and frail and unarmed as he is. And he’s sharp. But he raised the Batman, so what could he expect? That Bats got all that, uh, spirit of his from Thomas Wayne, in those short years they had before he decided going down a dark alley, reeking of money, with his defenseless omega and kid in tow was a perfectly fine thing to do? Any _toddler_ in the Narrows would know better than that moron had.

“Is my Batsy around? I think he’ll want to be here for this.”

He bares his teeth at him. “Whatever delusion you have—”

Poor, poor little Jeeves. Evidently, he doesn’t entirely know the man he raised. Though, he would guess that Batsy himself is mostly to blame for that.

Joker's arraignment, nine months ago, was _messy_. Not that he remembers a lot of it. Sometimes things got a bit foggy, what with how many sedatives and antipsychotics they’d shot him up with.

 _Antipsychotics_ —like he’s _crazy_. Like he _hallucinates_. Like his brain has to be reordered to understand reality. Actually, the prosecution’s entire case was being built around disproving all of those very things, words like _intent_ and _premeditation_ thrown around, and he’d already been deemed competent to tell the little judge his plea—well, _pleas_.

Maybe Hugo Strange had just been leaning heavy on the chemicals so he wouldn’t have to _deal_ with him until he could turn him over to Blackgate. Wanted to curtail another incident like the one with, say, Dr. Quinzel. Quinn. Whatever.

Honestly, between Harley, and Strange, and Thomas Wayne, _who_ was handing out these medical degrees? Could you buy one in a parking lot at three in the morning?

But in spite of that tiny handicap, Joker remembers pieces, impressions—judge-man _really_ hadn’t liked it when he’d laughed. (And laughed, and laughed.) Liked it even less when he affected a face of dead serious solemnity but couldn’t keep the mocking smirk from inching up the twisted skin at the edge of his lips.

Of course, it very shortly didn’t matter what he, or anyone else there, liked.

Batsy had been enraged. Positively _brutal_ , when he found him later. And he loved it, but there was one little thing—one little drug they’d given him at Arkham that _didn’t_ take immediate effect.

Suppressants needed time to build up in the blood, and Joker had never been on them before. A couple doses shoved into his mouth by orderlies didn’t do anything to stop the heat that arrived just like clockwork.

The Bat wasn’t his first alpha. He can’t quite remember all of them—there are some, or more than just _some_ , left behind doors in his mind that he stepped out of a long time ago, onto an emergency exit with twining metal steps leading down, and off, and away.

No omega in the Narrows—in most neighborhoods, actually, this is _Gotham_ —has ever been able to save themselves for _one_ , like _respectable_ society has always said omegas should. Even Cobblepot, whining and fawning and simpering at the good com _missioner_ , oozing sickly sweet omegan devotion at him—well, everyone knows he was Narrows trash to start with, that he never would’ve been anything more if he hadn’t kept Maroni Sr. interested in him being a fucking knot tease. Maybe Falcone, too, depending on the version, though all of them invariably have some mention of that riddle freak and tally mark guy. All of it was before Joker’s time, though considering Cobblepot’s the only other omega in this city of any importance—really the only _mafioso_ of any importance, these days, unless you had a bad enough sense of humor to count somebody like Alberto Falcone—he really should make better headway on developing a clearer picture of what makes him _tick_. But that’s a thought to be shuffled to the back of the deck, pulled out later. When he’s less, er, _preoccupied_.

“No delusion, _Al_. I don’t get those. I was about to be shipped off to B _lac_ kgate because of how perf _ectly_ sane I am.”

No, the Bat Man wasn’t his first alpha, but he’s his last. And he’s the only one whose seed has ever been strong enough to _take_.

“Seems like Brucie’s been keeping some things from you, hmm? But he’ll be home soon.” He’s made sure Batman’s been having a particularly _slow_ week. “And they do say confession is good for the soul . . .”

He smacks his lips, and cackles, and nearly twirls, nearly _dances_ —here in this house Solomon Wayne built. (Well, the reconstructed version of it, anyway.) But the thing his descendant knotted into his belly, the _heir_ —well, it’s shifting and pushing and something _pops_ , suddenly.

Jeeves grimaces, eyes following the puddle of warm fluid seeping out of the Joker to the polished marble floor.

He grabs his arm, jerks it harshly in the direction he wants him to go. He nearly slips up the stairs but the butler stiffens his back and keeps him up, and then forcibly pulls him along when he stops to look at the portrait of little Brucie and his premortem parents looming over the foyer. What a strong alpha Jeeves must’ve been in his day (though not strong enough to ever put baby Bruce back together again.)

He takes him through doors and hallways, deep into one of the mansion’s wings. (Bat wings, hehehe.) Finally he stops outside one door in particular, hand curling around its crystal knob. It opens into a bathroom—bath _house_ , practically, with dark wood vanities and copious amounts of gilded, glittery accents.

“Shower,” he tells him, pushing him a few steps towards the stall.

“Hn?”

“You’re filthy. You smell like a gutter. Do you want to die from an infection in the gaping wound you’re about to have?”

“I think . . . you’d like it if I did.”

He doesn’t even blink at him. Certainly doesn’t deny it.

(Oh, but if only Batsy had that kind of _cold_ streak in him. Then again, he wouldn’t really be _him_ , would he?)

“I’ll bring you towels and new clothes. Put . . . _those_ in the bin. Along with any weapons, please.”

When _was_ the last time he showered? Arkham? The clothes he’d acquired a bit after his escape, and he’s enjoyed them, actually—more breathable than the suit, not as stylish, but he’d doodled clown faces on the shirt with green and purple sharpies, jester hats. (And bats, so many bats.)

The suds die on him to start with, especially in his hair. But he does get where the old man is coming from, so he keeps adding more until a lather finally gets going. The hot water is nice, too, flushing the last remnants of the cold off his skin, loosening his muscles, taking some of the ache out of the scars on his face.

He rotates his neck until it gives a satisfying crack, braces his hands on his lower back and stretches up onto the balls of his feet. Of course, then there comes a particularly sharp pain up deep in his cunt, an incremental tightening across the surface of his abdomen.

“Wouldn’t expect anything less than hell from you,” he says fondly. “Just like the Bat. But keep in mind that I _am_ your mother, kid.”

(He killed his mother. But the whore had it coming.)

He swirls some soapy water around in his mouth and spits it out right before he finishes. Jeeves had swung by at some point, as the towels and a big, shapeless shirt are sitting out on the counter, folded into angles sharp enough to cut, and his old clothes and knives have vanished from the floor.

He's waiting for him out in the hall, and he’s not alone.

It nearly knocks the breath out of him. Because he’s felt the Bat’s hands and fists, laid flush against his naked chest, had his cock in his cunt and his mouth, but he’s never seen his _face._ Not even in pictures and videos of vapid, smiling little Bruce Wayne—that’s the biggest mask of all of them, more than the cowl could ever be.

But there’s none of the rage he’d been expecting playing out across that bare face. Oh, his expression is beautiful in its intensity, to be sure, but of all the emotions there, the only one that really seems to be directed at Joker is a kind of _resignation_. It’s not _defeat_ , but, well—Bats has had to have known, all this time, that this was a _very distinct_ possibility.

(Joker had already known about the same time the Bat had dropped him back at Arkham, clumsily redressed and trussed up and still leaking his cum down his thighs. His heats were usually longer than that, and there’s only one reason one would ever just _stop_.)

Jeeves takes in the emotions on Batsy’s face, too. And ooh, the look he shoots him—they are going to have _words_ later. “Master Bruce—”

“Nothing to say to me? You know, if you’re that upset, _Mastah Bruce_ , you could, uh, fix this. Don’t feel you gotta hold back on my account, I know you want to _hit me_ —”

An alpha has a set of base instincts that try to make violence towards their pregnant omega unappealing, but plenty have muscled through it before. But the Bat wouldn’t be breaking his one rule, arguably, and his little problem could just— _vanish_ in a bloody, gory mess down Joker's legs.

“Shut up,” he tells him, reaching out and grabbing him by the shoulder, just a few centimeters off from his sadly unmarked bonding gland. He steers him down the hall and off into a bedroom, where he unceremoniously pushes him down onto the bed.

“Ooh, Batsy,” he coos. They didn’t have a bed last time, and this is the softest one he’s ever felt. He wishes he’d pin him down to it and crawl between his legs again—he thinks they’d probably have time, if he made it quick. But the Bat doesn’t seem to be in the _mood_.

He watches in stony silence as Joker falls back against the pillows and clenches up, wild laughter bubbling out of his mouth uncontrollably until the pain dulls again for the time being.

“How did you figure it out?” he finally asks.

“I guessed!”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Oh, Brucie, do I look like the type to take the time to methodically deduce your identity?”

“Yet you did. How?”

Joker rolls his eyes, but uh, those contractions are _really_ starting to speed up. Finally, though, he’s able to pant: “The alley.”

Bruce doesn’t ask him to clarify that. He knows.

(And Joker really is like a second Joe Chill in a way, isn’t he? Chill was trash, of course—just a pathetic little junkie scraping for pennies and dimes to get his next fix. A pointless fucking existence. But both of them burned Bruce Wayne to ashes, took away nearly everything he ever loved and forced transformation from the smoking ruins.

The only difference being, though, that now Joker’s giving him something _back_.)

The boy slips out of him easily enough, after some _giggling shrieking pushing, pushing, pushing._ He goes directly to his father’s arms and nearly drowns Joker out, his screams are so loud.

He shakes his fists and seems far less impressed with Brucie than Brucie is with him, fumbling to gently, oh so gently, wrap him in a blanket and cradle him against his chest.

And that’s about the time Joker realizes there’s a second one. Bruce and Jeeves both look at him in shock, and he’s not sure he’s ever been fucking prouder in his life.

(Little omega lawyer girl, whatever the hell her name had been—she’d had some feistiness in her, Joker would give her that. But she wouldn’t have even been able to withstand the force of the Bat’s fucking, survive the stretch of his knot, much less give him two alpha sons at the same time.)

The second boy is identical to the first, but quieter, wider eyed. He relaxes back into the crook of his father’s other arm and automatically grabs for Alfred’s index finger when he offers it.

“Does red hair run in your family, Bats?” he asks. (He can’t remember if it does in his own.)

He nods jerkily, seems to speak around a lump in his throat. “My father’s sister, my grandmother, they both . . .” He seems overwhelmed, and it makes Joker give a little smile, gentler than usual.

Jeeves helps him clean up—hands him damp towels to wipe the sweat off his face, gives him a new shirt, changes the sheets, disappears somewhere with the afterbirth.

“That one should be Bruce Junior,” he says once he’s settled back into the bed, nodding to the older one. “And that one . . . they’re calling me the, ah, ‘Clown Prince of Crime’ now, aren’t they? And you’ve always been the Prince of Gotham. So, I’m thinking Duke for that one.”

“No.” His voice isn’t the growly Bat one, but it still brooks no argument.

“Aww. Fine, what’s your bright idea, then?”

He goes silent for a while, thinking. The older one is still grumbling, though at least the screaming has let off for now.

“Jerome,” he finally says. “And Jeremiah, for the younger.”

He wonders if he realizes that Joker's real name also starts with a J. Likely not.

“As my alpha wants,” he says, grin nearly stretching to his ears.

Bats looks at him sharply, even opens his mouth, ready to spit something vicious.

But then he doesn’t. He doesn’t even deny it.

(He could send him back to Arkham, but they both know he’ll just break out again. Just like he’d break out of Blackgate, if they ever got around to transferring him.

Gotham will never be safe from him, of course, because Harvey Dent was just one of _many_ things there for him to break. Jimbo the new commissioner, for example—there’s a man with so _very much_ to lose, and so much of the city he could drag down with him if he did.

But Joker’s going to be preoccupied for a while now, maybe longer if he gets his Bruce Junior, too, and if Batsy actually _claims_ him, well—there’s so much control for an alpha to have in that. He might actually be able to stop him. Sometimes.)

Bruce hesitates, both infants huddled protectively to his chest. Finally, for the first time since he was eight and on his knees next to his parents’ cooling corpses, he’s not the only living Wayne.

And then he reaches out and hands one to Joker.

**Author's Note:**

> This is 99% The Dark Knight Joker, but some influence from, like, the new movie and other versions crept in slightly. What can I say, I really fucking like that bathroom dance scene.
> 
> I imagine Joker's mom in this universe was some blend of Penny Fleck and Lila Valeska. Also I arbitrarily decided to mention Gotham Sal Maroni as being The Dark Knight's Maroni's dad, because I think it works best with their ages.
> 
> I set it in December because I've been replaying a lot of Arkham Origins, which is honestly my favorite in the Arkham series. Additionally, a sidequest in it that I like involves Cyrus Pinkney and Solomon Wayne, though in this universe I have to think that Cyrus hooked up with Amadeus Arkham after faking his death, because even in canon he seemed super into him.
> 
> Poor Bruce. He's got some tough years ahead with the twins.
> 
> Title comes from the song "The Mother We Share" by CHVRCHES, whereas the series title is from the song "Hometown" off the Silent Hill 3 OST.
> 
> -Anna


End file.
